Category: Penitential Rites

PRIEST: As we gather to celebrate today’s Eucharist, Jesus reveals the essence of God’s love – to forgive without limit! So He challenges us to be a people of reconciliation, a community of peacemakers, to live in God’s endless and unconditional forgiveness.  Called to refuse to allow bitterness to arise from our wounds,  we seek to understand a God who is at once strong in demanding justice and gentle in forgiving!  And God is foolish enough to expect us to share the strength of his struggle and the gentleness of his forgiveness.  How often we fail!

READER:            When we judge rather than seek to understand,
                                  condemn rather than forgive

                                                    LORD HAVE MERCY…

                                   When we close our hearts to those who have hurt us,
                                  loving only those who love us;
                                  when we close our minds and hearts to the challenge
to be peacemakers and reconcilers

                                                    CHRIST HAVE MERCY…

                                   When we are only too ready to seek and expect forgiveness,
but slow to offer that same forgiveness;
quick to expect support with our problems,
                                    and slow to reach out to others in theirs

                                                    LORD HAVE MERCY…

PRIEST:      May the God of all mercy give us a new heart  of compassion,
clothe us in forgiveness
                         and send us to our world as bearers of his reconciling love,
                         bringing us all to everlasting life…

                                                   AMEN!

PRIEST: We gather to celebrate the World Day of the Sick associated with yesterday’s Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.  The Gospel speaks to us of a Jesus who overflows with healing and life for the broken and the outcasts. Mary as the servant of God’s healing in Lourdes challenges us to work for that equality and justice that will bring health-care and hope to the poorest of the earth. Our mission is to witness to the Gospel of Life and the tenderness of God especially for the excluded, wounded and vulnerable of our world. Do we seek to be signs of hope and healing?

READER:       For the ways our words have wounded,  not healed;
                            our hearts have hardened against another,
                             not opened in caring and compassion, offering hope

                                                LORD HAVE MERCY…

For the ways we have not valued and supported
those whose work is medicine, research or caring;
when we could have shared the burden and did not

                                                CHRIST HAVE MERCY…

For the times we have been too preoccupied with self
                               to reach out and listen to another’s pain;
                               slow to respect every person, not bearers of the Gospel of Life

                                                LORD HAVE MERCY…

PRIEST:    O God of love without limit,
                       make us compassionate as you are compassionate;
                       Jesus,  come to bring us Life in all fullness
                       makes us whole and holy;
                       Holy Spirit, breath of love and great Comforter,
                       bind us together in unbreakable bonds of a love that give hope
                       and so bring us all to everlasting life…

                                                 AMEN!

PRIEST:    As we come to this last Sunday of our Liturgical Year, we celebrate Jesus Christ, King of all Creation. We celebrate the One who came with a dream for the world, for the Universe – a dream of creation alive with divine love, drawn together in the deepest Unity in Christ. We celebrate our Shepherd-King who identifies Himself with the poor and excluded of our world and who laid down His life on the Cross to make this Dream a reality. On this great Feast, which is also National Youth Sunday, we rejoice in the gift of  our young people who are called to make the Dream of God a reality for the world. So we ask ourselves:  does Jesus reign in our hearts and in our lives? Do we share His Dream with our young people and draw them joyfully to serve His Kingdom? Does the quality of our loving reveal the Servant and Shepherd King to our wounded world? Do we serve each other and our suffering planet in the name of our King?

READER:            Father, your Spirit prays within us ‘Your Kingdom Come…’,
                                  When we do not seek and serve first the Coming of Your Kingdom
A Kingdom Justice, Love and Peace

                                                       LORD HAVE MERCY…

                                   Jesus, our Servant-King, from your heart flowed living water,
                                    well-spring of our love and healing for our wounds:
                                    wash us clean of our compromises,
                                    that we may live your Gospel and build your Kingdom…

                                                       CHRIST HAVE MERCY…

                                       Holy Spirit, come and refresh our wearied hearts and tired bodies,
                                       that we may once more live the challenge of the Kingdom,
becoming each day your New Creation
listening always to the cry of the Earth, the cries of the Poor,…

                                                       LORD HAVE MERCY…

PRIEST:        Lord God, Trinity of Love and source of Life,
                         touch us with the mercy of Your Kingdom,
                         work in our hearts, renewing our lives,
                         and lead us in the ways of the Beatitudes:
                         heal our blindness that we may see,
                         cleanse our hearts that we may love,
                         and renew our dedication
                         that we may work for the coming of Your Kingdom upon the earth
                         bringing us and all the world to everlasting life…

                                                         AMEN!

PRIEST: November is the month of remembrance – remembering those who have died in both war and in peace;  remembering those we have loved and are now ‘gone before us marked with the sign of faith.’ But we are an Easter People and Alleluia! is our song – we are children of the Resurrection, children of our God. As we celebrate Baptism today we know we die with Christ in the waters of baptism in order to rise to a new life in Him, now and for all eternity. So we remember with living faith, knowing that the dead are fully alive in the Resurrection in ways we can only glimpse darkly. Today also marks a most important day for our world, our planet, as the United Nations COP 27 Conference gathers in Egypt. This Conference must make binding and effective decisions to arrest Climate Change before it is too late and we condemn our children and grandchildren to inhabiting a dangerous world! In a moment silent prayer, let us remember our beloved dead, and pray for the success of COP 27 and the future of our planet. 

READER:            For our fears that stop us trusting God
for being unwilling to sacrifice ourselves in the service of others …

                                                      LORD HAVE MERCY…

When we fail to give our world a witness to eternity;
when our lives are little different from those around us…

                                                      CHRIST HAVE MERCY…

Because Jesus has destroyed death and restored life
                                  in the power of his death and resurrection…

                                                      LORD HAVE MERCY…

PRIEST:      May the God of the Living embrace us with forgiveness,
                        heal us with tenderness, empower us with mercy,
                        and bring us into everlasting life…

                                                         AMEN!

PRIEST: Today we celebrate God’s great yearning for us, His compassion and acceptance of us – His passionate desire that we should allow him to love us and so to change us … to restore us to our truest selves. We hear how Jesus reaches out to someone everyone else rejects and calls a corrupt, wealthy but outcast man, Zacchaeus, to conversion. As he answered the call of Jesus, he came to know the power of Jesus’ love converting him from his old life of injustice and sin to a new life of generosity and holiness. We all stand in need to deeper conversion, welcoming God’s mercy into  our hearts. Let us now allow the mercy of God to change and convert us into the ways of the Kingdom.

READER:            When we hide from the injustice that lurks in our own hearts,
                                 the prejudices hidden in our own minds…

                                                       LORD HAVE MERCY …

When we judge others, condemn them and shun them,
And yet are not honest about our own failures and sins…

                                                       CHRIST HAVE MERCY …

When we are afraid to let God love us and change us,
when we fail to struggle for honesty and justice in our world…

                                                       LORD HAVE MERCY …

PRIEST:     May the God who comes searching for us speak our name,
                      bring us forgiveness, lead us into justice and heal our hardness,
                      bringing us  all into everlasting life…

                                                        AMEN!

PRIEST:      The familiar story in today’s Gospel – the Pharisee and the sinner – reveals God’s way of looking at the sinful one and the religious person. Not at all what we might expect!  Jesus’ words challenge every form of religious pride, as well as our hardness of heart. God urges us today, on this World Mission Sunday, to be humble bearers of reconciling and forgiving love, to throw wide open the doors of God’s mercy. May we allow his word to challenge our easy assumptions about both God and people. Let us commit ourselves afresh as ‘ambassadors of reconciliation’ and peace and so bring something of Gospel Freedom to our contemporary world.

READER:                 For the times and ways that we judge others as inferior to us,
more sinful than us, less worthy than us…

                                                       LORD HAVE MERCY…

For the pride that boasts of our virtues and ignores our vices
whenever we look down on others
because they do not practice their faith like us…

                                                       CHRIST HAVE MERCY…

For our unwillingness to welcome God’s compassion
                                     and forgiveness into our own lives,
                                     for hardness of heart that withholds mercy from another…

                                                       LORD HAVE MERCY…

PRIEST:        May the God and Father of all compassion hold us in his love;
                         may our redeeming Brother, Jesus, free us from all sin
                         and heal all our wounds;
                         may the Holy Spirit’s fire purify our hearts
                         sending us bearers of reconciliation to our world,
                         bringing us to everlasting life…

                                                          AMEN!

PRIEST: Jesus teaches us today about the need to continue praying – especially when nothing seems to be happening. Can we trust God even when God seems silent? when God seems uninvolved? Do we believe that God always listens to us … and with love? Or do we need God to be constantly reassuring us and doing our bidding? But God is far more urgent about bringing justice to the poor, the weak and the vulnerable than ever we are! If Justice is withheld, then don’t blame God! It is we who deprive the world of Justice. Let us repent …

READER:                  When we give up on prayer,
                                      when we lose heart and no longer believe God cares,
                                       Father forgive us…

                                                          LORD HAVE MERCY…

When we do not root our lives in the Truth of God in Scripture,
when our actions and thoughts are guided
                                       by the shallow fashions of the world
Jesus reconcile us…

                                                          CHRIST HAVE MERCY…

When we do not challenge and work for Justice for the poor,
when we do not defend the most vulnerable,
when we do not seek a more just world as urgently as God does
                                       Holy Spirit change us…

                                                          LORD HAVE MERCY…

PRIEST:         May the God Justice forgive our injustice;
                           May the God of intimacy have mercy on our shallow prayer;
                          May the God of the Weak fill us with Divine Urgency;
                                    and bring us all to everlasting life…
AMEN!

PRIEST:   Today Jesus challenges us as to the nature and demands of being His disciples: whether we prize our relationship with the Lord before all else? Whether we are willing to persevere in the task of loving by shouldering with Him the Cross of humanity’s suffering? Shamefully, the slave trade is a very real part of the 21st century …the second reading today asks us whether we enslave others or set them free? There is no-one who is not our brother, our sister. Let us trust the forgiving love of our God and as we welcome His mercy re-commit ourselves to the Light of Mercy to our world.

READER:            For the ways we do not put our relationship with God first,
                                 for not making time for prayer,
                                 for pushing worship to the sidelines of our lives

                                                   LORD HAVE MERCY…

                                  When we avoid carrying the Cross with Jesus,
                                   when we do not get involved with the suffering of others
                                   because it will demand too much of us

                                                   CHRIST HAVE MERCY…

                                   Because our world enslaves so many people today
for child exploitation, human trafficking, forced labour and servitude;
whenever men, women and children are sexually exploited

                                                   LORD HAVE MERCY…

PRIEST:    May our God of love, Father, Son and Spirit
                      embrace us with mercy, touch us with peace,
                      and reconcile us with compassion,
                      that we may build a world where all are free,
                      bringing all Creation to life everlasting …

                                                   AMEN!

PRIEST: Jesus challenges any temptation to complacency:  we do not have an automatic ticket into the Kingdom. Everyday, we need to say ‘YES’ again to entering by the narrow gate of Christ’s radical and universal love. That we come often to Mass, that we pray frequently, that we keep the Catholic rules – none of these of themselves brings us to salvation – the narrow gate is simply to love – to love more and more deeply, more and more widely, more and more courageously! And to open wide our heart to all peoples sharing the universal love of God. In the end nothing else really matters – just opening wide our heart as God does! Let us seek forgiveness for our failures to place love above all else in our lives.

READER:              When we are tempted to do the minimum required,
                                   …settling for the opposite of a life motivated by love!

                                                        LORD HAVE MERCY…

For every exclusiveness of heart
                                    that excludes others from our concern or our community;
                                    that thinks we alone are special…

                                                        CHRIST HAVE MERCY…

When we treat prayer and worship like a divine insurance policy,
                                    seeking a false sense of security,
                                   dulling our openness to faith, love, radical change …

                                                          LORD HAVE MERCY…

PRIEST:        May the God of Universal Love,
                                     forgive all narrowness of heart among us;
                          May Jesus, brother to all peoples and races,
                                     break down the barriers that divide;
                          May the Spirit of Divine Love open the narrow gate
                                     of ever-expanding love in our hearts;
                          and bring all the earth’s people into everlasting life

 AMEN!

PRIEST: Today we lift our voices in thanksgiving and praise for the ‘inestimable gift’ of the Eucharist;  we lift our eyes to gaze upon the awesome presence of our Lord and Saviour in the poverty of bread and wine;  we lift up our hearts to embrace the love whereby God touches the depths of our being.  In the Eucharist we taste the redeeming Blood of Christ; we enter into the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross that saves the whole world; we share the banquet that challenges us to feed the world with justice and love. The Body and Blood of Christ we share gives us life, shaping and renewing our lives and our communities:  let us repent the ways we are not the love of Christ…

READER:       The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Unity and Love:
for all divisions among Christians,
                            for every denial of love in our own hearts

                                        LORD HAVE MERCY…

The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Healing:
for the ways that our touch and words hurt rather than heal;
                             for the ways our Church excludes rather than welcomes

                                        CHRIST HAVE MERCY…

The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Christ’s Redeeming Sacrifice:
for the ways we do not love with a sacrificial love;
do not forgive with a divine generosity of mercy;
excluding others from our love, friendship and community

                                        LORD HAVE MERCY…

PRIEST:       May God rain down upon us the Bread of Forgiveness;
                         may Jesus pour out His redeeming Blood that heals our brokenness
                        may the Spirit draw us into the Unity that reconciles;
                       and bring us all to everlasting life…

                                         AMEN!